Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, also referred to as Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation or How I Spent My Vacation, is a 1992 American direct-to-video

Direct-to-video

Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...

 animated film from Warner Bros. Animation

Warner Bros. Animation

Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...

 and Amblin Entertainment

Amblin Entertainment

Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its...

. The film was produced in 1991 and released in March 1992. Featuring the regular characters from the animated program Tiny Toon Adventures, the film follows them during their summer vacation from school, mainly focused on Babs and Buster going downriver, Plucky and Hampton going to a world famous amusement park, and Fifi in search of her favorite movie star.

Steven Spielberg was the executive producer of the film, written by Paul Dini, Nicholas Hollander, Tom Ruegger, and Sherri Stoner. Tokyo Movie Shinsha, a Japanese

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 studio, animated the film. How I Spent My Vacation runs about 73 minutes, and was released on VHS and Laserdisc formats. It was the first animated film to be released direct-to-video in the United States. The film was later aired on television as four separate Tiny Toon Adventures episodes.

The film was one of the highest selling videos in the United States, listing on Billboard Magazine's 40 "Top Video Sales" for 16 weeks as of July 1992. Points of praise by critics included the film's jokes and celebrity caricatures, while points of criticism included the segmented plot. Themes of the film included parodies of pop culture and summer vacations.

Plot

The Tiny Toon Adventures characters leave for their summer vacations after their term at Acme Looniversity ends. Babs and Buster Bunny

Babs and Buster Bunny

Babs and Buster Bunny are cartoon characters from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. They are the stars of the show— they both appear in the Tiny Toons logo, and the show usually begins and ends with their gags. Buster is voiced by Charlie Adler for most of the...

 have a water pistol fight, which eventually escalates into them flooding Acme Acres. The bunnies, along with Byron Basset, float from Acme Acres down to a river and end up in the southern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, where they continuously avoid getting eaten by the river's residents. Fifi Le Fume

Fifi Le Fume

Fifi La Fume is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros.animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters on the show. Fifi is voiced by Kath Soucie. Fifi is a young, purple and white female skunk with a pink bowed ribbon in her hair. She attends Acme...

 is obsessed with film actor Johnny Pew and manages to track him down at the hotel at which he is staying. Once Fifi finally sees him in person she takes the opportunity to ask for his autograph, to which he claims to have no pen. When Fifi becomes depressed, he then offers for her to spend time with him by carrying his luggage. Plucky Duck

Plucky Duck

Plucky Allen Duck is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is also the titular character in Gary A. Lewis's Plucky Duck in the Summer Job. He is arguably the third main character on the show after Buster and Babs. Plucky is voiced by Joe...

 tags along with Hamton J. Pig

Hamton J. Pig

Hamton J. Pig is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is arguably the fourth main character on the show. Hamton is voiced by Don Messick. Hamton is a young male pig with blue overalls. He attends Acme Looniversity and lives in Acme...

 and his family as they drive to the amusement park HappyWorldLand. The trip turns out to be very long and painful for Plucky, who becomes annoyed with the family's habits and is almost killed by an escaped convict who the Pigs mistake for a hitchhiker. Plucky endures to ride only HappyWorldLand's Monorail and then go home, severely disappointing him.

Meanwhile, Elmyra Duff

Elmyra Duff

Elmyra Jessica Duff is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters from the show. Elmyra is voiced by Cree Summer in all of her appearances...

 visits a nature park and tortures the animals there with her adoration. The animals escape by stealing her family's station wagon and leaving the park. Fowlmouth drags Shirley the Loon to see Skunknophobia, a film he has already seen 100 times. Fifi and Johnny attend the same film. Fifi and the audience execpt Johnny are scared because of the THUD logo. Fowlmouth continuously talking through the film and is literally forced out of the theater by the enraged characters in the film after a man who was seating in front of him and throws him into the film. Fifi gets annoyed when Johnny steals her photograph of him and signs it for another girl, having had a pen all along. Fifi kicks Johnny out of the theater, causing him to end up with Elmyra and becoming her pet.

After realizing they are the main course at a dinner theater on a showboat, Babs and Buster escape with the help of Byron. They are chased down by the hungry animals they met throughout their journey, but are rescued by a banjo-playing possum Buster had befriended. The escaped convict returns and tries to kill them as well, and Buster, Babs, Byron and the possum try to escape in a mine cart. The four end up falling down a "plot hole

Plot hole

A plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story's plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot...

" which leads them through Wackyland and back to Acme Acres just in time for school to start again. The film ends with the characters' return to the Looniversity for the fall semester of school and Babs gets the last laugh as she finally manages to soak Buster by dumping water on him from the ceiling.

Voice cast

Name	Character
Charlie Adler	Buster Bunny, and the Movie Theater Ticket Taker
Tress MacNeille Tress MacNeille Tress MacNeille is an American voice actress best known for providing various voices on the animated series The Simpsons, Futurama, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Disney's House of Mouse, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Rugrats, All Grown Up!, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Dave the...	Babs Bunny, Babs' Mother, Drive-thru Waitress and Big Boo
Gail Matthius Gail Matthius Gail Matthius is an American actress and voice actress. She was a cast member of NBC's Saturday Night Live during its critical and ratings low point at the time , and co-anchored the Weekend Update segment with Charles Rocket in 1981.-Recurring characters:*Vicki, a Valley girl who,...	Shirley the Loon and Sissy Boo
Kath Soucie Kath Soucie Katherine Elaine Soucie is an American voice actress. She is sometimes credited as Kath Soucie, Katherine Soucie, Kath Souci, Kath E...	Fifi Le Fume Fifi Le Fume Fifi La Fume is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros.animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters on the show. Fifi is voiced by Kath Soucie. Fifi is a young, purple and white female skunk with a pink bowed ribbon in her hair. She attends Acme... , Li'l Sneezer, Little Boo and Bimbette Skunk
Don Messick Don Messick Donald Earl "Don" Messick was an American voice actor best known for his work for Hanna-Barbera. Perhaps his most well-known voice creations include Scooby-Doo, Papa Smurf, and Dr. Benton Quest....	Hamton J. Pig Hamton J. Pig Hamton J. Pig is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is arguably the fourth main character on the show. Hamton is voiced by Don Messick. Hamton is a young male pig with blue overalls. He attends Acme Looniversity and lives in Acme...  and the Radio Announcer
Joe Alaskey Joe Alaskey Joseph "Joe" Alaskey is an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, credited as one of the successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other characters from Warner Bros. cartoons. He was born in Watervliet, New York.-Other work:Alaskey has also done voices...	Plucky Duck Plucky Duck Plucky Allen Duck is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is also the titular character in Gary A. Lewis's Plucky Duck in the Summer Job. He is arguably the third main character on the show after Buster and Babs. Plucky is voiced by Joe...  and Tupelo Toad
Maurice LaMarche Maurice LaMarche Maurice LaMarche is an Emmy Award winning Canadian-American voice actor and former stand up comedian. He is best known for his voicework in Futurama as Kif Kroker, as Egon Spengler in The Real Ghostbusters, Verminous Skumm and Duke Nukem in Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Big Bob Pataki in Hey...	Dizzy Devil
Frank Welker Frank Welker Franklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...	Gogo Dodo Gogo Dodo Gogo Wackston the Dodo is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is one of the main characters on the show.-Description:... , Furrball Furrball Furrball is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is one of the main characters on the show.-Description:Furrball is a young, blue male cat with a hole on his right ear and a bandage on his tail... , Calamity Coyote Calamity Coyote Calamity Coyote is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. He is one of the recurring characters from the show.-Description:... , Little Beeper, Byron Basset, Uncle Stinky and Road Runner Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The characters were created by animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer Michael Maltese...
Rob Paulsen Rob Paulsen Robert Fredrick "Rob" Paulsen III , sometimes credited as Rob Paulson, is an American voice actor, best known as the voice behind Raphael from the 1987 cartoon of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Yakko Warner and Dr...	Fowlmouth, Johnny Pew, Mr. Hitcher, Horatio and Banjo Possum
Cree Summer Cree Summer Cree Summer Francks , best known as Cree Summer, is a Canadian actress, musician and voice actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as college student Winifred "Freddie" Brooks on the NBC sitcom A Different World...	Elmyra Duff Elmyra Duff Elmyra Jessica Duff is a cartoon character from the Warner Bros. animated television series Tiny Toon Adventures. She is one of the main characters from the show. Elmyra is voiced by Cree Summer in all of her appearances...  and Mary Melody
Candi Milo Candi Milo Candi Milo is an American voice actress and singer. She voiced many different animated characters such as the voice of Jacobo on Disney's The Replacements, Coco, Madame Foster and Cheese on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Irma Lair on Disney's W.I.T.C.H., lead character Maya Santos on Maya &...	Sweetie Pie
Jonathan Winters Jonathan Winters -Early life:Winters was born in Bellbrook, Ohio, the son of Alice Kilgore , a radio personality, and Jonathan Harshman Winters II, an investment broker. He is a descendant of Valentine Winters, founder of the Winters National Bank in Dayton, Ohio...	Wade Pig
Edie McClurg Edie McClurg Edie McClurg is an American character actress. She is known for her perky North Central dialect , common to persons from Middle America.-Career:...	Winnie Pig
Sorrell Booke Sorrell Booke Sorrell Booke was an American actor who performed on stage, screen, and television. He is best known for his role as the heavyset, corrupt politician "Boss" Hogg in the television show The Dukes of Hazzard....	Big Daddy Boo

Production

In 1990, Bugs Bunny Magazine reported that Warner Bros. was planning the release of How I Spent My Vacation, then referred to as a "Tiny Toon Adventures home video". Plans for the film began before Tiny Toon Adventures premiered on television. Warner Bros. discussed with executive producer Steven Spielberg whether the film should be released in theaters, but Spielberg insisted on a direct-to-video release. Spielberg said that he wanted to make the film a direct-to-video release because "animated features are ideally suited for the repeat viewing," a factor he found important to the genre's appeal to those watching animated films at home. In an interview for the Los Angeles Times, executive in charge of production Jean MacCurdy did not specify the budget of the film, but stated that it was far more costly than episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. According to Hal Erickson's Television Cartoon Shows: an Illustrated Encyclopedia, the budget of the average Tiny Toon Adventures episode was approximately $350,000.

How I Spent My Vacation was written by Tiny Toon Adventures writers Paul Dini, Nicholas Hollander, Tom Ruegger and Sherri Stoner. Ruegger also produced the film, and Steven Spielberg was the executive producer. The film was animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, a Japanese studio. The film had seven directors: Rich Aarons, Ken Boyer, Kent Butterworth, Barry Caldwell, Alfred Gimeno, Arthur Leonardi and Byron Vaughns. The film is about 73 minutes long.

Themes

One of the hallmarks of How I Spent My Vacation was the parody of film, popular culture and celebrities. Videos for Kids noted that the film makes fun of "California culture and youth" with the use of celebrity caricatures, such as those of Roseanne Barr

Roseanne Barr

Roseanne Cherrie Barr is an American actress, comedian, writer, television producer and director. Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997...

, Johnny Carson

Johnny Carson

John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...

, Arsenio Hall

Arsenio Hall

Arsenio Hall is an American actor, comedian, and former talk show host. He is best known for his talk show The Arsenio Hall Show, which ran between 1989 and 1994, and his roles in the films Coming to America and Harlem Nights.Hall is also known for his appearance as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the...

, David Letterman

David Letterman

David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...

, Jay Leno

Jay Leno

James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ,...

, Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...

, and Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone

Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed...

. The film makes fun of other cartoon characters, such as those of Superman

Superman

Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...

and The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid (1989 film)

The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...

. Babs' and Buster's travels down the river are a parody of the film Deliverance.

Jean MacCurdy said that How I Spent My Vacation makes fun of summer vacations by mocking "the boredom of summer and some of those horrible car trips". In the film, Plucky Duck's car trip with the Hamton family is very taxing; the members of the Hamton family are cheap, dull and clueless, as Plucky is nearly killed by an escaped lunatic that the family mistakes for a hitchhiker. The film's fictional theme park, "HappyWorldLand", is a spoof of Walt Disney World. The THX

THX

THX is a trade name of a high-fidelity audio/visual reproduction standard for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, and car audio systems. The current THX was created in 2001 when it spun off from Lucasfilm Ltd...

 logo is also parodied in the film as THUD.

Release

How I Spent My Vacation was released direct to video on March 11, 1992. The film was released on VHS and Laserdisc formats. Jean MacCurdy said that the film was released at that time to take advantage of the Easter market. Because retailers had high demand for the film, Warner Bros. shipped to them nearly one million copies, which the Los Angeles Times noted as "a record for direct-to-video programs".

How I Spent My Vacation was the first direct-to-video, feature-length animated film ever released in the United States. At the time, the concept of a direct-to-video animated feature was so strange to consumers that some mistakenly thought How I Spent My Vacation was a collection of Tiny Toon Adventures episodes.

The film later aired on Fox Kids

Fox Kids

Fox Kids was the Fox Broadcasting Company's American children's programming division and brand name from September 8, 1990 until September 7, 2002. It was owned by Fox Television Entertainment airing programming on Monday–Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.Depending on the show, the...

 on September 5, 1993, as four Tiny Toon Adventures episodes, episodes 97 through 100. While Warner Bros. began to release the Tiny Toon Adventures series on DVD, in volumes, on July 29, 2008, a recent discussion at the Home Theater Forum with Warner Home Video representatives revealed that Warner has "no plans" for more Tiny Toon Adventures releases on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

.

Reception

Reviews ranged from positive to mixed. Giving three out of four bones, the VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever highlighted the parodies of the film, and noted that "Parents will be [as] equally entertained [as children] by the level of humor and fast-paced action". Film critic Leonard Maltin gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying the film was "[e]pisodic," but praised the voice cast, songs and "funny business". TV Guide

TV Guide

TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

called the film a "firecracker", citing the film's many jokes. The book Videos for Kids: The Essential, Indispensable Parent's Guide to Children's Movies on Video praised the "tongue-in-cheek humor" and celebrity caricatures but issued warning to parents, stating that the film may not be appropriate for "children too young to identify satire" because the characters in the film "are rude and combative and may not provide the best behavioral role models". Videos for Kids still concluded that the film "should provide an enjoyable viewing experience for the whole family". Dennis Hunt of the Los Angeles Times said that the format of a direct-video film was "unusual", but that some parts of the film were "hilarious", especially the scenes which make fun of Walt Disney World. Since its release, How I Spent My Vacation has been rated as one of the "Top 20 (U.S.-Produced) Direct-to-Video Animated Films" by the "Animated Movie Guide".

Rating the film a "C+" overall, Steve Daly of Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

noted that while the film was "superior to most TV fare", he called the film a "pandering kidvid make-over" of the Looney Tunes

Looney Tunes

Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...

cartoons on which Tiny Toons was based, saying the characters were immature and the content was "fast without being funny". A 1992 issue of the Video Watchdog

Video Watchdog

Video Watchdog is a bimonthly, digest size film magazine started in 1990 by publisher/editor Tim Lucas and his wife, art director and co-publisher Donna Lucas....

was particularly critical, calling the film "a mixed bag" that "sacrificed (...) a cohesive plot for an outline that allows various teams of characters to come up with four stories." The magazine also questioned the point of using characters heavily based on the classic Looney Tunes characters instead of using the classic characters themselves.

The VHS release of How I Spent My Vacation was one of the highest selling videos in the United states; on the Billboard charts

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

, the video ranked 12th in sales in April 1992. In May 1992, How I Spent My Vacation rose to 9th in video sales. On July 18, 1992, How I Spent My Vacation had been on Billboard Magazine's 40 "Top Video Sales" for 16 weeks. On June 27, 1992, the film was ranked the 5th highest on Billboard's "Top Kid Video". On February 6, 1993, How I Spent My Vacation had been on the "Top Kid Video" list for 41 weeks. While it did not state the revenue of the film, the Toronto Star stated that the film sold so well that Warner Bros. decided to release videos of Tiny Toon Adventures episodes.